Introduction

__Overview__
During the month of June 2012, a Watershed Assessment and Analysis course from Kennesaw State University (KSU) monitored the health of two streams located within the Upper Chattahoochee Watershed. The two streams studied were Marsh Creek which contained 6 monitoring sites and Long Island Creek which contained 12 monitoring sites.

__**Goals and Objectives**__
The overall objective of the study was to determine how the two streams are being affected by urbanization. With urbanization comes an increase of impervious surfaces as well as the increase of non-point source pollution, thus causing a negative impact on urban streams. In order to determine the creeks' health, KSU students monitored various physical, chemical, and biological parameters of each stream. Before the students were able to conduct any testing in the field they were first trained and certified under the guidelines set by Georgia Adopt-A-Stream ([|AAS]). Once certified, students collected and tested water samples at each monitoring site to determine the chemical and physical make-up of the study area which included: pH levels, dissolved oxygen levels, Nitrogen-Nitrate and phosphate levels. Along with collecting and testing the water samples students also recorded physical characteristics such as air and water temperatures, relative humidity, as well as the conductivity of the stream. All of this data was collected once a week over a three-week period. Outside of the weekly monitoring, students also assessed the urban ecology of the riparian zones surrounding the monitoring site. The KSU Biology department lent their knowledge to help conduct a fish inventory at site 5 on Long Island Creek. Remote sensing data was also utilized to determine the land use trends over the previous decade. With all of the data collected students were then able to put together a snapshot of the overall health of the streams for the month of June 2012 and add to the existent baseline data for Long Island Creek as initiate a dataset for Marsh Creek.

Results of the the 2012 fish inventory can be found here Results of the 2012 watershed study can be found here Results of the 2012 Land Use study can be found here
 * __Results__**

__Marsh Creek__
The Marsh Creek watershed is located within the city of Sandy Springs and consists of approximately 5.78 square miles of land containing a large variety of urban development as well as being intersected by a major highway (GA-400). Marsh Creek is a tributary of the Chattahoochee River and its confluence with the river is located near the intersection of Riverside Drive and Johnson Ferry Road. The map below shows the location of the six sites monitored on Marsh Creek. Site 1 is located on the headwaters of the creek with site 6 being located at the mouth of the stream. Each study site contained one monitoring area.

__Long Island Creek__
As is the case with the Marsh Creek Watershed, the Long Island Creek Watershed is also located within the city of Sandy Springs. The watershed is situated between Mt. Vernon Highway to the north and Mt. Paran Road to the south. Consisting of 7.56 square miles of land, the Long Island Creek Watershed contains a large amount of urban development. Long Island Creek is a tributary of the Chattahoochee River and enters the river approximately 2 miles south of I-285 and approximately 0.5 miles to the east of I-75. The map below shows the locations of the six sites on Long Island Creek. Site 1 is located at the headwaters of the stream and site 6 is located at the confluence with the Chattahoochee River. Each site on Long Island Creek contained two monitoring areas.

__Previous Studies__
Prior to the 2012 assessment and analysis, KSU students had monitored the Long Island Creek Watershed in 2001 and again in the summer of 2011. The study conducted in 2001 was on a much smaller scale and was conducted by a single student, Matthew Harper, with the supervision of Dr. Mark Patterson. While the study did examine at the overall health of the Long Island Creek Watershed, the main focus was on land use patterns. Harper focused more on the remote sensing imagery and the stream's physical characteristics (Harper, 2001) and excluded any chemical or bacterial monitoring. The 2011 Watershed Assessment and Analysis class looked at the same parameters as this year's project, but added chlorophyll and algae analysis in sites 2, 4, and 6 of each creek as well as the study of the Marsh Creek Watershed.

The 2001 Long Island Creek Watershed study can be found [|here] The 2011 Watershed Assessment and Analysis study can be found

Introduction | Stakeholders | Water Quality | Urban Ecology | Land Use Mapping | Study Sites | Methods | Results | Conclusions